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Cathay Pacific is one of the oldest airlines in Asia and the flag carrier of Hong Kong. From its base in Hong Kong, the airline serves destinations worldwide and is a founding member of the Oneworld alliance. Its loyalty program — now branded simply as “Cathay” but formerly known as Asia Miles — offers some of the most valuable airline miles for booking premium flights.
Like many loyalty programs, Cathay Pacific’s miles come with an expiration policy that can quietly wipe out your balance if you’re not careful. Here’s how the expiration rules work — and how to easily keep your miles from expiring.
Do Cathay Asia Miles Expire?
Asia Miles will expire if your account has no activity for 18 months. Per the Cathay Pacific FAQ page, the Asia Miles expiration policy is as follows:
“You can keep your Asia Miles active so long as you earn or redeem Miles at least once every 18 months.”
You cannot reinstate your Asia Miles once they have expired. Remember that Asia Miles had two expiration policies running concurrently after it changed its mileage expiration policy in January 2020. However, all the older miles should have been used or expired by now.
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Activities That Will Rest Your Asia Miles Expiration
Both earning and redeeming your miles will reset your mileage expiration.
Earning Cathay Pacific Miles
Cathay Pacific Asia Miles has one of the most well-developed partnership networks, and there are a massive number of ways you can earn Asia Miles, including:
- Take a flight with Cathay Pacific.
- Credit a flight with a Oneworld partner like British Airways or Qatar Airways to Cathay Pacific.
- Book and credit a flight with a non-alliance partner like Air Canada or Air New Zealand.
- Earn Asia Miles on your next hotel stay at brands like Hyatt, IHG, Marriott, Hilton, and Best Western.
- Earn Asia Miles on Expedia, Hotels.com, and other travel bookings.
- Shop online through the Asia Miles portal.
- Earn miles for dining out with Asia Miles dining.
- Rent a car with brands like Avis and Budget (some geographical restrictions apply).
- Earn Asia Miles at many global shopping destinations, such as the Bicester Collection, Laithwaites Direct wines, and DELSEY Paris.
- Earn miles for everyday spending on the Cathay Pacific Visa Signature® card
Redeeming Cathay Pacific Miles
The best way to redeem Cathay miles is for premium cabin flight awards. This is doubly true if you can take advantage of one of the Cathay Pacific sweet spots. That aside, you can also use your miles for a host of other activities, although the value is not as good. You can redeem your Asia Miles for the following:
- Fly with Cathay or a partner.
- Donate your Asia Miles to a good cause.
- Redeem for a car rental, travel experience, or hotel stay.
- Book tickets and other entertainment.
- Pay with miles in the Asia Miles shopping portal.
- Convert your miles to other program points like Marriott Bonvoy and several in-store rewards programs.
Boosting Your Asia Miles Balance
Fortunately, Asia Miles has a wide range of flexible points currency partners. If you need to boost your balance rapidly for an award or to stop some miles from expiring, you can transfer at the following ratios.
The breadth of transfer partners adds a lot of value to the Asia Miles program. The functionality means you can rapidly take advantage of some of the program’s best redemptions. Also, it makes Asia Miles a perfect program to consolidate small point balances for a premium award booking.
Related: Back to Basics: An Introduction to the Types of Reward Points
Track Your Asia Miles Expiration With AwardWallet
With only 18 months before your Asia Miles expires due to inactivity, it pays to stay on top of your mileage expiration deadlines. Otherwise, your miles can slip away, and it is too late to do anything.
Fortunately, AwardWallet can keep an eye out for your mileage expiration and give you ample warning so you can take action and prevent your miles from expiring. To let AwardWallet track your Asia Miles balance and send you reminders before miles disappear, log in and add Asia Miles to your AwardWallet account.
Related: How to Track Your Rewards Using AwardWallet
Our Take
Although 18 months is on the short end of the spectrum for mileage expiration policies, it should not be a significant issue. That's because Cathay Pacific is generous with what it classes as qualifying activity to extend the validity of your miles. This, in turn, means that as long as you stay on top of your expiration deadline, there is almost no excuse for ever letting your Asia Miles expire.
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Hello, if I transfer 100 points from my Capital One points to my Asiamile account, will that extend my expiration by another 18 months?
Thank you
Hi Chin, it’s not guaranteed. You could try, but the activities we mentioned in our article are confirmed to extend validity. Transfers from Capital One aren’t guaranteed to reset the clock.
Thanks for the article. In the spirit of continuous improvement, the article could be improved to more clearly state whether transfers do or do not reset the clock.
The article currently reads, “If you need to . . . stop some miles from expiring, you can transfer at the following ratios.” I infer from this statement that transfers reset the clock. If that’s not the case, it might be worth rewording.
Following up on this. I transferred Amex points into my Cathay account, and the expiration date indeed extended.
I actually got plenty points which before Jan 2020 Is it possible to extend my expires date because looking at COVID 19 at this moment
We cannot travel within this 2 years Appreciate Asia Miles extension on my miles
I’m being loyalty to Cathay Pacific Airline would want to continue collect more point for Asia Miles and will let all my Business Partners friends and relatives in the world continue support Asia Miles .
Thanking you in advance
Stay safe and take care
I would recommend you contact Asia Miles representatives directly to resolve this. As far as we know, they have not announced a pause on the expiration of miles due to COVID-19: https://awardwallet.com/travel/loyalty-program-expiration-policies/
Can AwardWallet provide the expiration date (and reminder) of points that will expire that were earned prior to Jan 1st 2020?
Please contact our support team with such questions:
https://awardwallet.com/contact
Good that it is moving towards the right direction but I am not impressed that miles awarded before Jan 1, 2020 still expire. Nice try but I don’t live in HKG so I will pass.
It certainly is an improvement, yet at this day and age when more and more loyalty programs are switching to non-expiry policy this seems a bit archaic to me.
A much needed update to bring Asiamiles in line with other major FF programs such as Aadvantage, where all miles are extended provided that there is some qualifying activity every 18 months minimum.
Activity based system is more reasonable and achievable. Good for every one!
A positive change, but I wonder how CX will track which miles were earnt before and after 1/1/2020; could get messy in the case of refunds or changes.
I’m glad they’re hopping on the bandwagon about the expiration of mileage. Helps a great deal especially when you have travel CC like Capital One and want to transfer. Although it’s a bit of a con for how long it takes to transfer.
Nice update, now it’s easier to keep the miles alive with an activity!
It is so easy for Hong Kong residents to keep their Asia Miles accounts active, such as making restaurant reservations and earning miles through Openrice.
So nice to hear of a positive change for once!
Migrating to current AA miles policy. In this case it’s really an improvement.
This is a positive change. But I have to question why the miles earned before 2020 still expire and do not have the same expiry policy as those earned starting 2020.
The only I reason I can think of is an easier database transfer for the IT department.
This change both makes sense and seems reasonable to me.
I think the new activity based emphasis is to encourage customer engagement and hence loyalty. Cathay needs to attract more international / western customers, obviously.
Wish all miles and points would be required by law, like gift cards, to not expire. Guess I’ll just have to dream. Maybe someday.
Great way to keep those who are loyal to the programs of one’s choice. More important is that shifting from time based to activity based expiration system intuitively drives the customer base to take ownership of the reward programs as each person has his/her own shopping, dinning, and traveling preferences.
Positive change!
Because of the the very welcoming changes, Asia Miles have become the Asian avios points. Both programs are distance-based.
A good change. At least you don’t have to worry about getting enough miles for a ticket within 36 months . I’d be panicked every time to make a redemption. How did people do it before? ugh.
I don’t think I’d ever be able to make a redemption if I couldn’t hold on to my miles more than 36 mons. Especially for a biz ticket for more than one person.
Vast improvement of the scheme.
Are Amex transfers always instant? I’ve also heard they can take a few days.
Perhaps this article will be helpful:
https://awardwallet.com/travel/how-long-does-it-take-to-buy-and-transfer-miles/
This is a step in the right direction. Hard expiry is a major negative in any program.
Glad to see an actual “enhancement” from a loyalty program.
The update is exactly in line with the policies of the the American Airlines AAdvantage and Qantas Frequent Flyer programs. It is BIG NEWS in Hong Kong.
This is an improvement
Is this a repost? I feel like this story ran a short time ago. I recognize that the policy change date is right around the corner, but that seems a little quick.
No, similar story last week when Etihad updated its miles expiration policy
Glad to see so many programs start being more friendly to the average consumer. Most people can’t build up enough miles to use them in a 3 year period.
Good news! Its time to reset asia miles account again.
This is great news. A really good use of Asia Miles is USA to LHR on BA. The taxes are much lower than using Avios.
I think Avios / BA can get away with the high taxes or defacto fees because the majority of is corporate clients are based in the London area.
This seems to be a trend, and I wholeheartedly approve. This is another program I might think about using because of this change.
Definitely. Multiple programs have improved or outright eliminated their expiration policies recently. And, I’m not sure if any have gone the opposite direction recently. There does seem to be some competition in our favor on this front.
This is a very nice change indeed.
Now I hope SQ will follow and change their expiration policy to something better.
Looking at the shopping mall, it looks like iTunes might be a relatively inexpensive option for keeping an Asia miles account active.
It would be more honest to say that miles WILL expire UNLESS there is qualifying activity at least once every 18 months.
Miles expiration is something that should be abolished. If the miles are yours to use that should be it Nice to see that Southwest miles do not expire, despite this Asia miles setback.
I hope Singapore airlines will follow.